


Hot Shop of Hopelessness

by davefoley



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Emetophobia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8191598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davefoley/pseuds/davefoley
Summary: post-satellite joel cannot look at the stars anymoreless than he did so on the satellite





	

**Author's Note:**

> this was a piece i wrote very very very long ago, last september to be exact, when i had begun getting into mst... it's a topic i wanted to touch on a lot, topic being joel's thought process post-mitchell but pre-soultaker, but ending up forgetting until today when i found the unfinished document on my google drive. finished it up 2day and i hope it's to past me's specifications...

when a dove is plucked of its feathers, it plummets

far far down from the skies it had roamed

on the ground, at ease, then lost, then trapped 

(by human hands)

the dove carries on

and looks at the sky it cannot touch for two reasons

to ask why god is not there anymore

and to dream

\--

Business today was gentle as always. Kind folk, loud and boisterous folk (but they meant well and spoke no ill), quiet folk -- all amble in for a moderate meal, a conventional conversation.

Hello Joel, how are you?

I’m good /-///--/-/-, how are you?

I’m fine, thank you. Weather’s gonna be clear all day. How’s business?

It’s a living and a little bit more.

That’s good. I’ll have the special.

You’re in luck --/-//--//, it’s especially special.

You’re too much Joel.

Can’t help it.

This certainly doesn’t beat the pyrotechnic gig, but it does. Gentle living just makes for a gentle life: no going around it, just going about it. You try not to think about what happened 2 years ago, when in a smoldering pit of ground and grass (along with dented metal and the sound of a droning alarm rattling your senses, from the ears to the eyes to the numbness to the cry to the brief wish for--) you escaped the Satellite of Love and came back to Earth, in one physical piece. 

You remember the dizzying birth -- wobbling out the entrance of the pod feeling naked, feeling like everything was new (and it was). People looked at you in splendor when you reached civilization, like it was time for the thought-to-be-canceled baby shower. Behold, Joel Robinson had been born again; in the memories and consciousness of everybody who had knew him, then forgot him, and now remember him again. 

It was an arduous first couple of months before food felt like food, and society’s heavy responsibilities hit your pan of thought with a heavy clunk. You’re still trying to pay your water bill and damages -- did you know leaving your sink on for an unprecedented amount of time and eventually flooding your entire apartment had repercussions? Never would have guessed, is what you thought absentmindedly as your landlord gave you the earful. Living on a satellite free of humanity’s stifling laws gets you like that.

Your last customer is finishing up his fries before a couple of bucks and loose change heads your way, into your register, and you yourself, not even a bit tired, locking the door and heading home. It’s a short distance to a small house -- with a quaint backyard and a white picket fence -- but its most proudest feature is its strangely large garage.

You’ve housed the escape pod there, for the time being. You think about it often, and dream about fixing it. Maybe to do exactly what you really shouldn’t be thinking about doing, but you play the hypotheticals anyway, because your self control never had any reins over your ideas and ambitions. You touch the metal surface of the pod’s exterior; it’s cold, yet you feel warm thinking about the memories. The bots. You wonder how they’re doing.

Despite yourself, you open up the pod the best you can and climb in. This is probably a bad idea, you think. The chances of the pod closing in on you permanently seem overwhelmingly high. You take a seat and stop breathing, and vividly bring yourself back to the sight of the control panel when it was blinking and flickering, more overwhelming than the expanse of stars that whizzed by. Unlike a star it was right in front of you, tangible. But like a star it was viscerally unsettling seeing so many up close. Would and do you remember how you used to stare at the stars until you grew sick of them?

And now seeing this sea of dead switches and flips, are you lonely again?

You felt wrong sitting in the pod at that point and stepped out, feeling as if you traveled too far into a crater of your mind you thought had cemented over. The tarp is flown over it more ruthlessly than usual and you shut off the lights, a darkness swathing it twice more, a barrier as thick but weary as a weathered tent removing it from your sights. Have you camped since you came back? You’ll think about doing it on the weekend, but only if the weather’s cloudy.

Door’s closed, soft patter of bare feet against tile, water running, curtains closed -- systematically putting yourself in the knees-up sitting position with the water keeping you centered and surrounding your body with nourishing warmth. It’s a routine you partake in more shamelessly than you did dote; maybe age has finally touched you and now you yearn. Has this behaviour ever passed on to the bots? You smile thinking of them learning how not to bathe, but rather turn on the faucets in the first place... You hope they’re okay up there. 

But you don’t look up -- just forward. Water breaks when you pull the plug and stand up, you stick your head out inquisitively through the curtains but there’s nothing and you know that. You’re clothed and you head to the bedroom for a sleepless night.

You could have sunk into the sheets pleasurably, would have, but you can’t. Instead of laying there listlessly until light breaks you run outside.

...

But Joel...! The stars! ...

The stars...

... They’re so far away...

So far away when you were entranced by them prior you imagined the world sliding past you just to touch one -- a foregone conclusion, what would have happened next would not have shocked you. 

Your body would have gone up in flames.

And would have became a little part of that star.

You tear your eyes from your backyard and god forbid, today be a clear day because the stars are laid out for you as immaculate and purposeful as you saw them last and you can’t help but feel their weight suddenly put you on your knees.

And you vomit. You wrack and shake, but you don’t cry. You keep pulling your head up from squalor and star at what you both revered and feared, what you ran from.

The dreams that never came to you flood back and it’s the movies you’ve watched and the time you spent on the Satellite of Love. They’re so much brighter -- illuminated by the stars like a lightbox, black silhouettes dancing... You have no safe haven to hide in, no water or jumpsuit to shed from. In all manner of speaking, you never could run away from this, but you could hide; and that’s what you did up until now and it’s only now when you push yourself out you see it’s always, always, been waiting for you.

The Satellite of Love, among the stars.

Bile rises in your throat and you choke out feebly,

Throw me a bone... why don’t ya...

\---

You started reconstruction of the pod the next day and for the next two years you fixed and waited for an opportunity, but by then you had already walked past it all.

By then you looked at the stars again from the same viewport 4 years ago and thought to yourself, that you were, and are, never alone after all.

You never could cope with isolation.

**Author's Note:**

> "You take a seat and stop breathing, and vividly bring yourself back to the sight of" was where it ended i died before i could finish it


End file.
